Tag Archives | tripoli

Prime Minister Saad Hariri Greeted With Animals Painted in Blue!

By Rami on May 2, 2018 in Elections, Politics, What the fuck!

I’m not sure where these photos were exactly taken, but they clearly show people painting camels and sheep in blue to greet Prime Minister Saad Hariri in their hometowns as he campaigns for his party ahead of the elections this weekend.

I totally understand people get over excited in some remote areas where politicians barely set a foot, but needless to say this is just too much…! I doubt people who come up with such ideas are mentally mature enough to choose their representatives in the parliament.

La Nuit des Musées 2018 is Taking Place This Saturday

By Rami on April 11, 2018 in Culture, Events

The Ministry of Culture is organizing the 5th edition of La Nuit des Musées which will take place this Saturday April 14th. This year, 13 museums around Lebanon will be open for free to the public starting 5:00PM until late at night.

Free shuttles will be available at LibanPark parking in Mathaf area for people from Beirut who wish to visit the museums in the north and south, but reservations are mandatory through Virgin Ticketing box office to secure your place.

I highly recommend you use public transportation to visit the participating museums in Beirut by the way because it tends to get very crowded around them on this day.

Here’s the list of the participating museums:

MUSÉE NATIONAL DE BEYROUTH
de 17h00 à 23h00
“Mathaf”, rue de Damas

MIM, MUSÉE DES MINÉRAUX
de 17h00 à 23h00
Campus de l’innovation et du sport, Université Saint-Joseph

MUSÉE DE PRÉHISTOIRE LIBANAISE DE L’UNIVERSITÉ SAINT-JOSEPH
de 17h00 à 23h00
Rue de l’Université Saint-Joseph, quartier Monnot

VILLA AUDI
de 17h00 à 23h00
Rue St Nicolas, Achrafieh

MUSÉE NICOLAS IBRAHIM SURSOCK
de 17h00 à 00h00
Rue St Nicolas, Achrafieh

MUSÉE ARCHÉOLOGIQUE DE L’AUB
de 17h00 à 22h00
Université américaine de Beyrouth, Ras Beyrouth

MUSÉE DE LA BANQUE DU LIBAN
de 17h00 à 23h00
Locaux de la Banque du Liban, Sanayeh

SENTIER CULTUREL À SAÏDA
MUSÉE DU SAVON
PALAIS DEBANNÉ
KHAN SACY
KHAN EL-IFRANJ
KASR OLA
de 17h00 à 23h00

MUSÉE DU CATHOLICOSSAT DE CILICIE
de 17h00 à 23h00
Antélias

MUSÉE DES ORPHÉLINS DU GÉNOCIDE ARMÉMIEN “ARAM BEZIKIAN”
de 17h00 à 23h00
Jbeil

MACAM – MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE ET CONTEMPORAIN
de 17h00 à 23h00
Alita, Jbeil

MUSÉE ETHNOGRAPHIQUE DE L’UNIVERSITÉ DE BALAMAND
de 17h00 à 22h00
Koura

60 Years Old Fisherman From Tripoli Is The New Loto Billionaire

By Rami on September 28, 2017 in Random

This is definitely not the first time someone claims the grand prize in Lebanese lottery and I bet we all feel some envy every time someone does. But in the case of this man, Ahmad Dandash, I guess that you can’t but feel delighted it went for someone who really deserves it.

The 60 years old fisherman seems to have been going through some difficult times and was unable to afford helping any of his kids get an apartment until he scored the loto. Feel free to call it fixed or arranged, but the video and the whole thing is heartwarming.

Man Shot in Tripoli for Adding Another Man’s Wife on Facebook

By Rami on June 24, 2017 in What the fuck!

Now that it’s almost taken for granted that road rage incidents get you killed on our very safe roads in Lebanon. Another thing you should probably beware of is adding people on Facebook!

This is actually the kind of things you expect to see on satire news websites but it really happened. A man in Tripoli was angered last night when his wife accepted a friend request from another man on Facebook, and since we’re all known for solving things in a civilized way, he simply went on to shoot that man in the thigh! (Source)

So yeah, be careful next time you add someone on Facebook…

Old Footage From The Opening of The Beirut-Tripoli Railway in 1942

By Rami on June 8, 2017 in Videos, Vintage

I’m pretty sure we will never witness something similar to this during our lifetime.

This video I just found on YouTube shows old footage from the opening of the Beirut-Tripoli railway line on December 20th 1942 which was at that time the last link in the Cairo-London line, and you can see the Lebanese president back then Alfred Naccache present at the event (at the 1m56s mark).

This railway was by the way also connected at that time to Haifa in Palestine, but following the Israeli occupation in 1948 and civil war that erupted in Lebanon in 1975, it almost all disappeared except for a small portion that is currently still operational nowadays between Nahariya and Haifa in northern Occupied Palestine. (Source)

As you watch the video you can easily identify Naher El Kaleb at the beginning and probably Jbeil at the 1m10s mark, but it gets difficult (at least for me) to identify the areas that later show.

Syria Street – Everyday Life Stories From Jabal Mohsen and Bab El Tabbaneh

By Rami on February 15, 2017 in Photography, Politics, Social

Jabal Mohsen and Bab El Tabbaneh are two neighborhoods in Tripoli that got popular over the past 10 years for all the wrong reason.

Following the assassination of PM Rafic Hariri, the residents of the two neighborhoods got into more than 10 armed clashes mainly due to their division among different sects and having different political affiliations, and the rounds of violence eventually intensified with the start of the Syria war in 2011.

The two areas are separated by Syria Street, also known as Bab El Dahab, and it is a proof that while people in general think that their residents are vertically divided, they in fact share so much in common. Many of them run shops on both sides of the street, and they simply just rely on each other to get on with their lives. People from Bab El Tabbaneh go to Jabal Mohsen for good and services that might not be available in their area and vice versa.

What they also share the most though are their problems, concerns, and daily struggles. The residents of both sides suffer from poverty, bad living conditions, and lack of jobs which is unfortunately motivating their youths to search for any source of income even if it was coming from politicians in exchange of firing arms at their neighbors…

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Lebanon recently collaborated with photographer and filmmaker Brandon Tauszik who’s well known for GIF-based storytelling, in order to convey the real image about the people from both Jabal Mohsen and Bab El Tabbaneh. Brandon spent a week listening to residents from both sides and the result was some quite expressive visuals along with interesting stories from their everyday lives.

To explore more about this project, check SyriaStreet.com in hope that these two areas never take part of another rounds f violence, and that their representatives in the parliament stop abusing them every time they want to make some political gain.

Fishermen in Tripoli Caught Huge Inedible Sunfish and Sold it to The People!

By Rami on February 5, 2017 in Food, Tripoli, What the fuck!

Fishermen from Tripoli caught a huge Ocean Sunfish weighing more than 1000Kg this morning and people got outraged about it since it is a threatened specie of fish that feeds on jellyfish and poses absolutely no danger to divers.

In my humble opinion, I believe it is the authorities who should be blamed about such things because it seems like they allow anybody to go fish anything they encounter in the sea. It is true the Ocean Sunfish can be mistaken for a shark sometimes due to its dorsal fin, but fishermen should be educated enough about the species that should not be caught, and should also learn how to differentiate one from the other before given permission to work.

Aside from being endangered or not, fishermen should refrain from killing inedible species, and even if they did by mistake then they should get rid of it instead of selling it in the market, which unfortunately is not the case with this Sunfish! According to Wikipedia, it is not yet confirmed whether the Ocean Sunfish has some poisonous organs or not, so I wouldn’t take a chance trying to eat it. However, several photos on Facebook showed the fish being cut and sold at some fish market in Tripoli.

This is basically similar to witnessing a donkey or a sick cow being killed at the Karantina Slaughterhouse… I doubt such thing would go unnoticed and so should be trading this fish.

I just hope no one gets poisoned from consuming it, and I also the authorities invest a little more into educating the fishermen in order to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.

Photos via Michel Bariche

Update:

As per the below memo, Governor of North Lebanon Judge Ramzi Nohra ordered the confiscation of this fish meat due to it being poisonous, in addition to ban killing such endangered species. Such memos and decisions are definitely better late than never!

via Animal Animals Lebanon FB Page.

On Tripoli’s New Bike Lane

By Rami on May 20, 2016 in Sports, Tripoli

I really hate to be a party pooper, but as I much as I like the city of Tripoli and love spending time there, I didn’t feel much excited about that new bike near the International Fair.

To start with, I personally love biking and I imagine a ride across Tripoli would be so fun to do since it’s a relatively small city with many interesting places to see, without forgetting the tasty stuff you’ll find whether from food and drink carts or small shops everywhere.

That being said, the initiative of introducing a bike lane sounds like a pretty good move and I hope it gets implemented in other areas around the city as well. But before we all get hyped can we question whether people will actually respect it or not?

Lebanese drivers barely acknowledge the existence of white lines on the road, and I don’t think an additional yellow one will make any difference
Whether designated to be place for cars to park or not, the right side of any street here is taken for granted as a parking space. It’s more like an unspoken driving rule and chances are cars will soon be parked all over that yellow line.
Moreover, even if we manage to clear that space exclusively for bikers, we will never be able to convince taxi drivers to stop using it to pick up passengers.

So yes basically unless we start respect the basic driving rules in Lebanon I see the new line totally useless. Until then, ride safely!

Little Free Library

By Rami on February 3, 2016 in Lebanon

I was at Horsh Tabet Public garden with my kid last Sunday when I came across this cool box called “Little Free Library” by Arcenciel.

The purpose of this box is to promote reading among people by simply allowing them to take any book they want from it, and in the same way also add their own books to it, thus the sign on top that reads “Take a book, return a book”. Pretty cool, don’t you think?

Arcenciel’s initiative is part of an international movement going by the same name “Little Free Library” that encourages people to put up similar boxes in their neighborhood to exhange books among each other. And there’s no restriction on the genre of books that people can add to the box, which makes it interesting for you to check on the available books every time you stumble upon these little libraries.

I tried looking up if other boxes are available in Lebanon and only managed to find an additional one in Tripoli. It would be nice to have more of these boxes at public places and even private ones like coffee shops maybe, where people would more likely be in the mood to read something.

Shark hunted off Chekka coast today

By Rami on July 15, 2014 in Lebanon

Around a month ago, a fisherman caught an 800Kg shark off the Mina coast of Tripoli, and just today another one was hunted near Chekka.

I’m not sure if these sharks are dangerous or not, but I don’t think fisherman should go after them especially if they find them away of the spots where people swim.

Update:
This seems to be an old photo. I should have verified before publishing the post.

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